Tag: tea

A close-up of the roses growing in my herb garden. My daughters and I collect the petals as they go limp, and then dry them in the sun room. We prefer rose buds in our tea, so we’ll save these petals for craft projects and potpourri.

Every morning my cat, Salem, gets me up. He has a continuous feeder, so he’s not hungry, he just wants mom up. After jumping in bed with me and purring like crazy his sister, Honey, joins us and we go into the kitchen to put the kettle on for a cup of red raspberry leaves with rosebuds. The cats stay with me while I start my morning routine. I’m up before the rest of my household, which I love because it’s quiet and I have some time to think before our day officially begins.

Raspberry leaves drying in my sunroom. It smells so good in there that I could stay all day.

The leaves from red raspberry bushes can be made into a tea with a flavor reminiscent of black tea, and it doesn’t contain any caffeine. It’s also great at reducing cramps during menstruation. It’s been my experience that it works best when taken regularly.

The thistle is the national flower of Scotland, and this motto is perfect for the humble weed. When I harvest them in the late summer I have to wear my long sleeves and thick gloves.

Milk thistle is a natural liver cleanse, aids in gall bladder issues, and may even lower cholesterol. It can also help milk flow in nursing mothers.

I harvested this window full of thistles for making teas out of later and hung them up to dry. Naturally, they burst open in my sunny windows, and the seeds came out. I gathered up the seeds (they only made a little mess in my sun room) and saved them. I plan to plant them in an empty corner of my herb garden.

What I call my ‘self’ now is hardly a person at all. It’s mainly a meeting place for various natural forces, desires, and fears, etcetera, some of which come from my ancestors, and some from my education, some perhaps from devils. The self you were really intended to be is something that lives not from nature but from God. C. S. Lewis